California’s landmark environmental law was overhauled in Sacramento this week, and it could mean more housing for San Diego. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills on Monday that will weaken the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to make building housing easier. The law was praised by envir

With prices leveling off and more homes on the market, buyers now are more likely to walk away from a deal when they hit a snag before closing. As a result, one out of every six Southern California transactions fell apart in May, killing 2,261 home sales, according to Redfin, the online brokerage. I

California remained the world’s fourth-largest economy by a narrow margin as 2025 started. This bragging-rights scorecard – a talking point among the state’s cheerleaders – has been filled with intrigue as the top of the chart changes along with global economic swings. The rankings involve comparing

The city of San Diego is preparing to lease its office tower at 101 Ash St. on a long-term basis, at no upfront cost, to a development team that plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to convert the property into housing for low-income families. On Wednesday, San Diego’s Land Use and Housing

A third-party expert in distressed real estate will take control of The Campus at Horton project in downtown San Diego as developer Stockdale Capital Partners seeks to hash out a resolution with its lender over hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid debt. On Thursday, San Diego Superior Court Jud

Downtown San Diego’s first condominium tower in eight years has started sales with a wide range of prices. Bosa Development opened sales to the public last week for its 40-story Andia tower near the Symphony Towers building on B Street. Prices at the 399-unit tower start in the high $500,000s  for a

In a decision with broad implications for victims of January’s wildfires, the state’s home insurer of last resort is on the hook to pay for smoke damage claims, according to a court ruling issued this week. The California FAIR Plan said it would likely not appeal the Tuesday decision by Superior Cou

The city of San Diego is vacating its dilapidated City Operations Buildings as hundreds of municipal workers in the Development Services Department move into recently leased and improved spaces in downtown and Mission Valley. The relocation process, which has been years in the making, is underway an

San Diego home price gains continued to slow in April and came close to negative territory. The San Diego metropolitan area’s home price increased 1% annually, said the S&P Case-Shiller Indices report for April released Tuesday. It was part of a nationwide slowdown that has seen prices drop in some

Why so few home sales in Southern California counties? Well, renters in Orange and Los Angeles counties enjoy the nation’s fourth-largest savings between what landlords charge and the cost of financing a house purchase. My trusty spreadsheet reviewed a study by Zillow that estimated everyday rent pr

The lender behind The Campus at Horton project is asking a local judge to immediately strip developer and property owner Stockdale Capital Partners of control of the property as it seeks to protect the asset during the foreclosure process. Luxembourg-based investment management firm AllianceBernstei

California house hunters are balking at high home prices – just like their fellow Americans. The significant difference is that the rejected homes in California happen to be far more expensive than the typical U.S. house. Please forget the “buyer’s market” vs. “seller’s market” debate that’s spun by

After a two-year pause, the city of San Diego and a private developer are seeking community input as they craft the plan for a small, downtown park on a tight budget. Last week, the Urban Innovation Division of San Diego’s Development Services Department kicked off a summer-long outreach effort for

Surging Southern California rent inflation, while national price hikes decline, suggests January’s Los Angeles wildfires may be costing local tenants. My trusty spreadsheet looked at rent costs as tracked by three local Consumer Price Indexes – Los Angeles and Orange counties, the Inland Empire and

One of San Diego’s oldest companies announced Wednesday it will be purchased by a Florida-based investment firm. Guild Mortgage, based in San Diego since its 1960 founding, has agreed to sell all remaining shares of its company for $1.3 billion to Florida-based Bayview Asset Management. Guild had be

For the first time in almost two years, San Diego home prices didn’t increase. The median home price in San Diego County was $900,000 in April, flat year-over-year, said Attom Data Solutions. The last time the median, a combination of all closed sales of single-family houses, townhouses and condos,

The developer behind The Campus at Horton project is teasing a forthcoming resolution with its lender and a flashy new plan for the shuttered Horton Plaza Park — even as it stares down a forced sale of the property more commonly known as Horton Plaza, is in breach of contractual obligations with the

You’d need to earn $154,200 annually to comfortably finance the purchase of the typical San Diego County condo. How did we establish that budgetary standard for what’s arguably the “bargain” homeownership option? Well, my trusty spreadsheet looked at monthly pricing data from Attom, which tracks clo

A local architect coalition has given awards for the restoration of Balboa Park’s Botanical Building, an office in Tijuana, a project at MiraCosta College and more. The San Diego branch of the American Institute of Architects, or AIA, has been giving out awards annually for what it feels are the bes

The man who claimed to be disrupting the backyard housing industry — securing financing, permits and building granny flats across San Diego County, before collecting millions of dollars without doing the work — is now seeking federal protection from his many creditors. Jose Frausto, the founder and